The blacks always felt that the carpet-bagger was more friendly to them than the scalawag was, for the carpet-baggers associated more closely with the negroes. The alien white teachers boarded with negroes; some of the politicians made it a practice to live among the negroes in order to get their votes. The candidates for sheriff and tax collector in Montgomery went to negro picnics, baptizings, and church services, drank from the same bottle of whiskey with negroes, had the negro leaders to visit their homes, where they dined together, and the white women furnished music. The carpet-baggers seldom had families with them, and, excluded from white society, began to contract unofficial alliances among the blacks. Scarcely an alien office-holder in the Black Belt but was charged with immorality and the charges proven. Numbers were relieved by the legislature of the penalties for adultery. The average Radical politician was in time quite thoroughly Africanized. They spoke of “us niggers,” “we niggers,” at first from policy, later from habit. When Lewis was elected, in 1872, a white Radical cried out in his joy, “We niggers have beat ’em.” Two years later white Radicals marched with negro processions and sang the song:—
“The white man’s day has passed;
The negro’s day has come at last.”[2116]
One effect of Reconstruction was to fuse the whites into a single homogeneous party. Before the war political divisions were sharply drawn and feeling often bitter, so also in 1865-1867 and to a certain extent during the early period of Reconstruction. At first there was no “Solid South”; within the white man’s party there were grave differences between old Whig and old Democrat, Radical and Conservative. There were different local problems before the whites of the various sections that for a while prevented the formation of a unanimous white man’s party. There were the whites of the Black Belt, the former slaveholders, who wished well to the negro, favored negro education, and looked upon his political activity as a joke, but who came nearer than any other white people to recognizing the possibility of permanent political privileges for the black. They believed that they could sooner or later regain moral control over their former slaves and thus do away with the evils of carpet-bag government.
It must be said that the former slaveholding class had more consideration, then, before, and since, for the poor negro than for the poor white, probably because the negroes only were always with them. The poorest whites felt that the negro was not only their social but also their economic enemy, and, the protection of the owner removed, the blacks suffered more from these people than ever before. The negro in school, the negro in politics, the negro on the best lands—all this was not liked by the poorest white people, whose opportunities were not as good as those of the blacks. Between these two extremes was the mass of the whites, displeased at the way negro suffrage, education, etc., was imposed, but willing to put up with the results if good. The later years of Reconstruction found the temper of the whites more and more exasperated. They were tired of Reconstruction, new amendments, force bills, Federal troops, and of being ruled as a conquered province by the least fit. Every measure aimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they were considered incorrigible, not worthy of trust, and when necessary to punish some whites, all were punished. And strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh rebellion. “When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back a little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy: ‘Mamma, make Bob ’have hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit him with my stick.’” Probably the grind was harder on the young men, who had all life before them and who were growing up with slight opportunities in any line of activity. Sidney Lanier, then an Alabama school-teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor, “Perhaps you know that with us of the young generation in the South, since the war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying.” Negro and alien rule was a constant insult to the intelligence of the country. The taxpayers were non-participants. Some people withdrew entirely from public life, went to their farms or plantations, kept away from towns and from speech-making, waiting for the end to come. I know old men who refused for several years to read the newspapers, so unpleasant was the news. The good feeling produced by the magnanimity of Grant at Appomattox was destroyed by his southern policy when President. There was no gratitude for any so-called leniency of the North, no repentance for the war, no desire for humiliation, for sackcloth and ashes and confession of wrong. The insistence of the Radicals upon a confession of depravity only made things much worse. There was not a single measure of Congress during Reconstruction designed or received in a conciliatory spirit.
Under the Reconstruction régime the political, and to some extent the social, morality of the whites declined. Constant fighting fire with fire scorched all. While in one way the bitter discipline of Reconstruction was not lost, yet with it the pleasantest of southern life went out. During the war and Reconstruction there was a radical change in southern temperament toward the severe. Hospitality has declined; old southern life was never on a strictly business basis, the new southern life is more so; the old individuality is partially lost; class distinctions are less felt. The white people, by the fires of Reconstruction, have been welded into a homogeneous society.[2117] The material evils of Reconstruction are by no means the more lasting: the state debt may be paid and wasted resources renewed; but the moral and intellectual results will be the permanent ones.
In spite of the misgovernment during the Reconstruction, there was in most of the white counties a slow movement toward industrial development. All over the state in 1865-1868 and 1871-1874 there were poor crops. The white counties gradually found themselves better able to stand bad seasons. The decadence of the Black Belt gave the white farmer an opportunity. The railroads now began to open up the mineral and timber districts, rather than the cotton counties. During the last four years of negro rule the coal and iron of the northern part of the state began to attract northern capital and rapid development began. The timber of the white counties now began to be cut. In the mines, on the railroads, and in the forests many whites were profitably employed. Farmers in the white counties, having thrown off the local Reconstruction government, began to organize agricultural societies, Patrons of Husbandry, Grangers, etc., and to hold county fairs. The Radicals maintained that this granger movement was only another manifestation of Ku Klux, and it was, in a way.[2118]
Immigration from the North or from abroad amounted to nothing; disturbed political conditions and the presence of the negroes prevented it. Nor did the Reconstruction rulers desire immigration; their rule would be the sooner overthrown. There were two movements of emigration from the state—culminating in 1869 and in 1873-1874. Those were the gloomiest periods of Reconstruction, especially for the white man in the Black Belt. Most of the emigrants went to Texas, others to Mexico, to Brazil, to the North, and to Tennessee and Georgia, where the whites were in power. It was estimated that in this emigration the state lost more of its population than by war.
In the Black Belt the condition of the whites grew worse. Frequent elections demoralized negro labor, and crops often failed for lack of laborers. The more skilful negroes went to the towns, railroads, mines, and lumber mills. On account of this migration and the gradual dying off of slavery-trained negroes, negro agricultural labor was less and less satisfactory. The negro woman often refused to work in the fields. The white population of the Black Belt decreased in comparison with the numbers of blacks. The whites deserted the plantations, going to the towns or gathering in villages. Taxation was heavy, tax sales became frequent. One of the worst evils that afflicted the Black Belt was the so-called “deadfall.” A “deadfall” was a low shop or store where a white thief encouraged black people to steal all kinds of farm produce and exchange it with him for bad whiskey, bad candy, brass jewellery, etc. This evil was found all over the state where there were negroes. Whites and industrious blacks lost hogs, poultry, cattle, corn in the fields, cotton in the fields and in the gin. The business of the “deadfall” was usually done at night. The thirsty negro would go into a cotton field and pick a sack of cotton worth a dollar, or take a bushel of corn from the nearest field, and exchange it at a “deadfall” for a glass of whiskey, a plug of tobacco, or a dime. These “deadfalls” were in the woods or swamps on the edges of the large plantations. It was not possible to guard against them. The “deadfall” keepers often became rich, the harvests of some amounting to 30 to 80 bales of cotton for each, besides farm produce. Careful estimates by grand juries and business men placed the average annual loss at one-fifth of the crop. A bill was introduced into the legislature to prohibit the purchase after dark of farm produce from any one but the producer. The measure was unanimously opposed by the Radicals, on the ground that it was class legislation aimed at the negroes. The debates show that some of them considered it proper for a negro to steal from his employer. After the Democratic victory in 1874 a law was passed abolishing “deadfalls.”[2119]